The Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) is one of the third generation mobile communication technologies designed to succeed GSM. 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a project within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to improve the UMTS standard to cope with future requirements in terms of improved services such as higher data rates, improved efficiency, and lowered costs. The Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) is the radio access network of a UMTS and Evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN) is the radio access network of an LTE system. In an E-UTRAN, a user equipment (UE) 150 is wirelessly connected to a radio base station (RBS) 110a commonly referred to as an evolved NodeB (eNodeB), as illustrated in FIG. 1. Each eNodeB 110a-c serves one or more areas referred to as cells 120a-c. Furthermore, each eNodeB is connected to an Operations Support System (OSS) 130 for operation and maintenance purposes. The interface between an eNodeBs and the OSS is at least partly proprietary. In FIG. 1, a link between two nodes, such as the link between a positioning node here called Evolved Serving Mobile Location Center (E-SMLC) 100 and an eNodeB 110a,b,c, may be either a logical link e.g. via higher-layer protocols and/or via other nodes, or a direct link. Hereinafter, a UE in a positioning architecture is a general term covering a positioning target which may e.g. be a mobile device, a laptop, a small radio node or base station, a relay, or a sensor. A radio base station is a general term for a radio network node capable of transmitting radio signals. A radio base station may e.g. be a macro base station, a micro base station, a home eNodeB, a beaconing device, or a relay.
UE positioning is a process of determining UE coordinates in space. Once the coordinates are available, they may be mapped to a certain place or location. The mapping function and delivery of the location information on request are parts of a location service which is required for basic emergency services. Services that further exploit a location knowledge or that are based on the location knowledge to offer customers some added value are referred to as location-aware and location-based services. The possibility of identifying a UE's geographical location has enabled a large variety of commercial and non-commercial services such as navigation assistance, social networking, location-aware advertising, and emergency calls. Different services may have different positioning accuracy requirements imposed by an application. Furthermore, requirements on the positioning accuracy for basic emergency services defined by regulatory bodies exist in some countries. An example of such a regulatory body is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulating the area of telecommunications in the United States.
There exist a variety of positioning techniques in wireless communications networks, differing in their accuracy, implementation cost, complexity, and applicability in different environments. Positioning methods may be broadly categorized into satellite based and terrestrial methods. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is a standard generic term for satellite navigation systems that enable UEs to locate their position and acquire other relevant navigational information. The Global Positioning System (GPS) and the European Galileo positioning system are well known examples of GNSS. In many environments, the position may be accurately estimated by using positioning methods based on GPS. Nowadays wireless networks also often have a capability to assist UEs in order to improve an UE receiver sensitivity and a GPS start up performance, as for example in the Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) positioning method. However, GPS or A-GPS receivers are not necessarily available in all wireless UEs, and some wireless communications systems do not support A-GPS. Furthermore, GPS-based positioning may often have unsatisfactory performance in urban and/or indoor environments. There may therefore be a need for a complementary terrestrial positioning method.
There are a number of different terrestrial positioning methods. Some examples are:
Cell Identity (CID) based positioning, where the location is based on the I identity of the current cell. Enhanced CID (E-CID) also takes e.g. Timing Advance (TA) into account to improve the positioning accuracy which may be important for positioning in large cells.
UE-based and UE-assisted Observed Time Difference Of Arrival (OTDOA), where the UE position is determined based on UE measurements of reference signals from three or more sites or locations.
Network based Uplink Time Difference Of Arrival (U-TDOA) positioning, where the UE position is determined based on several RBS measurements of a reference signal transmitted by the UE. Multi-lateration is then used to find a UE position as the intersection of hyperbolas when based on time difference measurements, or of circles when based on time of arrival measurements.
Fingerprinting or pattern matching positioning, where location fingerprints are collected in an off-line phase and are used for mapping measured signal strengths with a position. Location fingerprints are e.g. vectors of signal strength values of reference signals received from different RBSs in a position. Adaptive E-CID (AECID) is a fingerprinting positioning method that combines geographical cell descriptions corresponding to CIDs, received signal strengths and TA. AECID may also be extended to include Angle of Arrival (AoA) information. Whenever an A-GPS, A-GNSS or OTDOA high precision positioning is performed, the E-SMLC orders measurements of the radio properties which is a subset of geographical cell descriptions, TA, signal strengths and AoA. The radio property measurements are quantized and produce the fingerprint of the obtained high precision position.
Positioning methods based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurements have been widely used, for example in GSM, UMTS and cdma2000. For LTE networks, UE-assisted OTDOA positioning which is based on downlink TDOA measurements is currently being standardized. A corresponding UE-based mode is another possible candidate for later releases. The UE-assisted and UE-based modes differ in where the actual position calculation is carried out.
In the UE-assisted mode, the UE measures the TDOA of several cells and sends the measurement results to the network. A positioning node or a location server in the network carries out a position calculation based on the measurement results. In LTE, the positioning node in the control plane is referred to as an E-SMLC. The E-SMLC 100 is either a separate network node, as illustrated in FIG. 1, or a functionality integrated in some other network node. In the UE-based mode, the UE makes the measurements and also carries out the position calculation. The UE thus requires additional information for the position calculation, such as a position of the measured RBSs and a timing relation between the RBSs. In the user plane, the location or positioning node is referred to as Secure User Plane Location (SUPL) Location Platform (SLP).
The OTDOA positioning has won good acceptance among operators and vendors for LTE positioning. Some operators have already started to plan for an OTDOA deployment in the LTE system. Moreover, the OTDOA related protocol in E-UTRAN has been adopted by the Open Mobile Alliance for user plane positioning. OTDOA is already standardized by 3GPP for GSM/EDGE RAN and UTRAN, but is not yet deployed in operational networks.
The OTDOA positioning is a multi-lateration technique measuring TDOA of reference signals received from three or more sites. To enable positioning, the UE should thus be able to detect positioning reference signals from at least three geographically dispersed RBS with a suitable geometry, as the UE's position may be determined by the intersection of at least two hyperbolas. This implies that the reference signals need to be strong enough or to have high enough signal-to-interference ratio in order for the UE to be able to detect them. With the OTDOA technique, the UE's position may be figured out based on the following measured parameters:
TDOA measurements of downlink reference signals;
Actual Relative Time Difference (RTD) between the RBS transmissions at the time when TDOA measurements are made; and
Geographical position of the RBS whose reference signals are measured.
With more or longer TDOA measurements for each RBS a better accuracy may be obtained. Measuring TDOA for signals from more than three RBSs typically also improves the positioning accuracy, although additional inaccurate measurements may also degrade the final accuracy. The accuracy of each of the measurements thus contributes to the overall accuracy of the position estimate.
There are several approaches to how to determine the RTD. One is to synchronize transmissions of the RBSs, as is generally done in a system using Time Division Duplex. In this case, RTD is a known constant value that may be entered in a database and used when calculating a position estimate. The synchronization must be done to a level of accuracy of the order of tens of nanoseconds in order to get an accurate position estimate. Ten nanoseconds uncertainty corresponds to three meters of error in the position estimate. Drift and jitter in the synchronization timing must also be well-controlled as they also contribute to the uncertainty in the position estimate. Synchronization to this level of accuracy is currently available through satellite based time-transfer techniques. Another alternative is to leave the RBSs to run freely without synchronization but with some constraint on the maximum frequency error. In this scenario, the RTD will change with time. The rate of change will depend on the frequency difference and jitter between RBSs.
LTE Positioning Protocol (LPP) and LTE Positioning Protocol annex (LPPa) are protocols useful for carrying out OTDOA in a control plane solution in LTE. When receiving a positioning request for the OTDOA method, the E-SMLC requests OTDOA-related parameters from eNodeB via LPPa. The E-SMLC then assembles and sends assistance data and the request for the positioning to the UE via LPP. FIGS. 2a-d illustrate example architectures and protocol solutions of a positioning system in an LTE network. In the control plane solution, illustrated in FIG. 2a, the UE communicates with the E-SMLC transparently via the eNodeB and the Mobility Management Entity (MME) over LPP, and the eNodeB communicates with the E-SMLC transparently via the MME over LPPa. The user plane solution illustrated in FIG. 2b does not rely on the LPPa protocol, although 3GPP allows for the possibility of inter-working between the control and user plane positioning architectures. The SLP is the positioning node for user-plane positioning, similar to E-SMLC for control plane positioning, and there may or may not be an interface between the two positioning servers.
Since signals from multiple distinct sites need to be measured for OTDOA positioning, the UE receiver may have to deal with signals that are much weaker than those received from a serving cell. Furthermore, without an approximate knowledge of when the measured signals are expected to arrive in time and what is the exact pattern of a positioning reference signal, the UE would need to do signal search blindly within a large search window which would impact the accuracy of the measurements, the time it takes to perform the measurements, as well as the UE complexity. Therefore, to facilitate UE positioning measurements, the wireless network transmits assistance data to the UE. The assistance data and its quality are important for both the UE-based and the UE-assisted mode, although assistance data contents may differ for the two modes. The standardized assistance data includes among others a neighbor cell list with physical cell identities, a number of consecutive downlink sub frames used for the reference signals, an expected timing difference, and a search window. The expected timing difference and the search window, together referred to as search parameters, are important for an efficient reference signal correlation peak search.
Assisted GNSS (A-GNSS) is an important positioning technology, which is an extension to the existing A-GPS positioning standardized in 3GPP. Assistance data for positioning technologies such as A-GNSS or OTDOA, relying on assistance data, is useful for achieving a desired positioning accuracy. At the same time, building up assistance data requires efforts in the network, and information and information exchange between network nodes. Furthermore, the assistance data for different technologies is typically different. However, some of the information intended for the assistance data with one technology may be useful for another positioning technology or other-purpose network functions such as Radio Resource Management (RRM) and self-optimization.
The basic assistance data information elements for A-GNSS in LPP were mainly borrowed from the latest release of the Radio Resource Location Protocol (RRLP), which is the protocol used for location signaling in GSM and UMTS. Some data structure and format changes were made to make the assistance data information elements simpler and more future-proof. Besides the legacy A-GNSS assistance data, some new assistance data fields have been added, namely, the bsAlign indicator and the GNSSsynch indicator. The two fields are defined under the GNSS assistance data component. However, the standard is not clear on how a positioning node such as the E-SMLC may obtain this information.